[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}

[Marc Riddell]

> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Marc Riddell
> <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> [...]
>> And if changes were proposed to this present system, who (or what entity)
>> would approve and implement them?
> 
on 1/31/11 10:14 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert at gmail.com wrote:

> The community, by consensus, for approval.  Whoever chose to
> participate and was allowed to do so, for implementation.

This may have worked when the Community was the size it was in the
beginning, but how, with such a enormous Community that has evolved, do you
determine consensus?
> 
> Part of the greater problem is that self-selection by interest (our
> current mechanism for involvement in change and implementation) does
> not select for competence or for agreement with the consensus (or with
> what the consensus stands for).
> 
> We lack a functional dictator (or president) to cut the knot and enact
> efficiently; Jimmy might be able to do so, but burned a lot of his
> "street cred" with the community writ large with the incident that led
> to reductions in founder bit authority.  I personally disagree with
> that, but I see a clear problem with community accepting his fiat now.
> Facing any significant opposition his position would not be an
> effective tiebreaker.
> 
People stop trusting their leaders, when their leaders stop trusting them.
It¹s a cautionary tale.

I have lived in communes in the past; some still flourish today. Its members
are the definition of anti-authority thinking. But the ones that succeed are
led by persons just as anti-authority in their beliefs as the rest, but have
the interpersonal skills and trust of the community to lead it toward
achieving its commonly-agreed-upon goals. The needs and wishes of the
Community must come first. A leader merely assures that every Member has a
voice, and that that voice is heard as distinctly as all of the rest. That
leader can also assure that, if there is a hole in the roof, the group stays
focused on finding methods of fixing it, rather than spending countless
hours arguing about why everything inside is getting wet.

Given the size and complexity the Project has attained, such a leader is
needed.

Aaron Sorkin said: "Choosing a leader: If we choose someone with vision,
someone with guts, someone with gravitas, who's connected to other people's
lives, and cares about making them better; if we choose someone to inspire
us, then we'll be able to face what comes our way, and achieve things we
can't imagine yet."

And I will add one more. The ability to separate their thoughts and ideas
from themselves. When this is accomplished, the person can defend the former
without feeling they must defend the latter.

It's time.

Marc